• Staff at Birmingham, Coventry and Derby to continue working into new year

A factory employing disabled Birmingham workers has been granted a reprieve from closure – throwing around 200 staff a vital pre-Christmas lifeline.

The city’s Remploy base, and two more in Coventry and Derby, are to go up for sale with employees working in the automotive trade safeguarded from redundancy for now.

The details emerged as the Government announced that 875 workers, including 682 disabled staff, were at risk of redundancy in 15 other Remploy factories.

Announcing the latest closures, a statement from Remploy said: “The automotive business operating from factories in Coventry, Birmingham and Derby is a viable business with a strong and established customer base.

“It has the potential to move out of government control as a going concern.”

Kevin Ashworth, chair of the joint union committee and lead officer for Unite, said of the reprieve for the Midland sites: “We have to keep our fingers crossed that we find somebody with the right business acumen who can run them successfully.

“We have great reservations about the future of all those earmarked for closure but Birmingham, Coventry and Derby would seem to have the best chance of survival.”

The Birmingham factory at Garretts Green employs up to 90 disabled people and supplies millions of pounds-worth of parts a year to Jaguar Land Rover.